'I beg your pardon,' said Helen, and she turned her head aside a little, for the laugh was not quite genuine, and she was suddenly afraid of those idiotic tears. 'Only it amuses me that any one should think me a serious matter.' 'Don't be cynical, Miss Buchanan; that's what's the trouble with you; you take refuge in cynicism rather than in thought. If you'd think about it and not try to evade it, you'd know perfectly well that there is nothing so serious to you in all the world as your own life.' 'I don't know,' said Helen, after a little pause, sobered, though still amused. 'I don't know that I feel anything very serious, except all the unpleasant things that happen, or the pleasant things that don't.' 'Well, what's more serious than suffering?' Mr. Kane inquired, and as she could really find no answer to this he went on: 'And you ought to go further; you ought to be able to take every human being seriously.' 'Do you do that?' Helen asked. 'Any one who thinks must do it; it's all a question of thinking things out. Now I've thought a good deal about you, Miss Buchanan,' Franklin continued, 'and I take you very seriously, very seriously indeed. I feel that you are very much above the average in capacity. You have a great deal in you; a great deal of power. I've been watching you very carefully, and I've come to the conclusion that you are a woman of power. That's why I take it upon myself to talk to you like this; that's why it distresses me to see you going to waste--half alive.' Helen, her head still turned aside in her chair, looked up at the green branches above her, no longer even pretending to smile. Mr. Kane at once startled and steadied her. He made her feel vaguely ashamed of herself, and he made her feel sorry for herself, too, so that, funny as he was, his effect upon her was to soften and to calm her. Her temper felt less bad and her nerves less on edge. 'You are very kind,' she said, after a little while. 'It is very good of you to have thought about me like that. And you do think, at all events, that I am half alive. You think I have wants, even if I have no purposes.' 'Yes, that's it. Wants, not purposes; though what they are I can't find out.' She was willing to satisfy his curiosity. 'What I want is money.' 'Well, but what do you want to do with money?' Franklin inquired, receiving the sordid avowal without a blink. 'I really don't know,' said Helen; 'to use what you call my power, I suppose.' 'How would you use it? You haven't trained yourself for any use of it--except enjoyment--as far as I can see.' 'I think I could spend money well. I'd give the people I liked a good time.' 'You'd waste their time, and yours, you mean. Not that I object to the spending of money--if it's in the right way.' 'I think I could find the right way, if I had it.' She was speaking with quite the seriousness she had disowned. 'I hate injustice, and I hate ugliness. I think I could make things nicer if I had money.'